February 20 Music of the stars now louder

I started to night walk about a week after my mother died, I'd wait until the house was quiet and dad had stopped crying and carefully creep down the stairs and out the back door, leaving it on the latch as I felt I was too young to be in charge of a key. As soon as I stepped out the air would wrap itself around me and I'd feel calm, a sense of timelessness. Sometimes I'd walk for hours, hiding in the shadows whenever I heard a noise or saw the lights of an oncoming car. We were lucky enough to live in the sleepy suburbs and it was remarkably easy to get around, no one would ask me how I was, there was space enough for me to work things out. At the end of the street there was a small village green which I'd outgrown a year or so ago in my waking state but at night it became my place, I'd sit on the bench and watch the sky, listening to the sounds all the souls were making on their final journeys into space, it made no sense to me that we went back to the earth.

After the funeral I stopped night walking, I knew everything I needed to know by then.